February 1, 2013
L’Incoronazione di Poppea at West Edge Opera
By Adam Broner

Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Incorona­zione di Poppea includes extremes of love and cruelty that are by turns breathtaking and venal. Shake­speare, a con­temporary of Monte­verdi, also proved that constancy, but what was most startling here was the reworking of a despicable bit of history into an absurd—and deeply moving—paean to love.

February 1, 2013
Poppea for Popular Times Intrigues and Seduces
By Georgia Rowe

In a few short years, West Edge Opera has earned a reputation as the Bay Area’s most adventurous small opera company. Under general director Mark Streshinsky, the company scored another hit over the weekend with a new production of L’incoronazione di Poppea (the Coronation of Poppea).

Opera lovers might suppose Monteverdi’s 1643 opera, presented here in the original Italian, an unlikely choice for a company committed to re-imagining classic works for contemporary audiences. Then again, this Baroque masterpiece already seems thoroughly modern, with all the elements—infidelity and illicit sex, dirty politics and power grabs, torture and cross-dressing—for an updated staging.

January 23, 2013
Christine Brandes: Singing While Rome Burns
By Lisa Houston

Soprano Christine Brandes has performed with the Los Angeles Opera, the New York City Opera, and the Washington National Opera, as well as many of the best-regarded Baroque ensembles on the scene today. The Ohio native and self-professed lover of baseball, bookstores, and the Constitution has made a happy life in the Bay Area.

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West Edge Opera’s New Season

     “Always trying to push the envelope.”
        —San Francisco Classical Voice

Pushing the envelope. This is what drives our work. At West Edge Opera we believe there is no limit to where this art form can go. We want to break down the perceptions of opera as exclusive and distant and present the essence of the story. To reveal the emotions that can’t be spoken.

Our 2013 Season:

• Monteverdi's L’incoronazione di Poppea from 1642
• a contemporary opera, Bonjour M. Gauguin, based on the writings of Gauguin and his contemporaries
• Benjamin Britten's 20th century chamber opera, The Turn of the Screw